5 Questions Elementary Teachers Can Ask to Evaluate Their Edtech Use

In most classrooms today, screens are no longer something teachers pull out for a special project or occasional activity. Technology is now foundational to the structure of the school day: Morning slides, digital assignments, online assessments, curriculum apps, and use of videos for transitions are just a few examples of how screens have become the default. While some apps and digital resources are genuinely helpful for learning, some tech use in classrooms becomes the default simply because it is there.

In my work supporting elementary teachers, there are five questions I return to when thinking about screen use with students. Exploring these questions isn’t about rejecting technology or adding one more thing to teachers’ plates. It is about protecting professional judgment inside classrooms where digital tools are already deeply embedded.

5 Questions that Help Inform Classroom Tech Use

1. What is this helping students do? Screen use becomes automatic when we stop examining its purpose. Before opening an app, assigning a digital task, or projecting a slide deck, I find it helpful to ask one simple question first: What is this helping students do?

Sometimes the answer is clear. Technology may provide access to information, allow students to create something they could not create otherwise, support communication, or increase access for learners who need accommodations.

This focus on purpose rather than habit reflects a growing conversation among educators about intentional technology use. UNESCO’s 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report similarly emphasized that educational technology decisions should be driven by learning goals rather than by technology itself.

But sometimes the answer is less clear. A digital task may simply be replacing something that could happen just as effectively through discussion, hands-on materials, reading, or writing.

When the tool serves the learning purpose, technology can be powerful. When the purpose becomes harder to identify, that may be worth a closer look.

2. Is this supporting thinking, or just completion? In screen-heavy classrooms, I find myself asking whether I’m seeing evidence of thinking or simply evidence of activity.

A student may click through slides, submit responses, finish an activity, or move through a platform exactly as intended. From the outside, everything appears productive. But productivity alone doesn’t tell us much about the quality of the thinking involved.

When I ask preservice teachers to reflect on a digital activity, I encourage them to look beyond whether students completed the task. Instead, we focus on the kind of thinking the activity requires. Thoughtful learning experiences often ask students to analyze, explain, create, discuss, or connect ideas. Other tasks may primarily involve clicking, selecting, matching, and moving on.

This question is especially important because digital platforms are often designed to keep students moving. Learning, however, often requires the opposite. It requires slowing down, revisiting an idea, wrestling with uncertainty, or discussing a problem with others.

What students produce matters. But so does the kind of thinking required to produce it.

3. Is this increasing interaction or reducing it? Technology can create powerful opportunities for collaboration. Students can work together on shared documents, respond to one another’s ideas, create projects collaboratively, and connect with people and information beyond the classroom walls.

But not every digital activity increases interaction.

In some classrooms, students spend much of the day working independently on devices. They may be actively engaged in tasks, but there are fewer opportunities to explain their thinking, ask questions, negotiate ideas, or learn alongside their peers.

When considering a digital activity, I find it helpful to think about what it is doing to the social environment of the classroom. Some tools create opportunities for collaboration, discussion, and shared problem-solving. Others shift more of the work into individual interactions between the student and the screen.

Learning is not only cognitive. Students develop understanding through discussion, feedback, questioning, and shared experiences with others.

Screens may occupy students’ attention, but classroom relationships remain an essential part of how learning happens.

4. What’s not happening because this is? Every instructional choice creates opportunities, but it also comes with tradeoffs. When we add something to the school day, something else often receives less time, attention, or space.

That doesn’t mean the choice is wrong. It simply means it’s worth noticing.

When thinking about screen use, I sometimes encourage teachers to look beyond what a tool is providing and consider what it may be replacing. This perspective is echoed in Jared Cooney Horvath’s The Digital Delusion, which urges educators to consider not only what technology adds to learning environments, but also what may be displaced along the way. A digital activity might reduce opportunities for discussion, hands-on exploration, sustained reading, writing by hand, peer collaboration, or even moments of productive struggle.

The question is not whether those experiences should always take priority. The question is whether we are making the tradeoff intentionally. In busy classrooms, it is easy to focus on what technology adds. It can be just as valuable to notice what it may be crowding out.

5. Where do I still have decision-making space here? Many teachers work in environments where some technology use is required. Devices, platforms, assessments, and curriculum tools are often already built into the structure of the school day. That reality can make it feel as though there are fewer decisions to make. But even within those systems, teachers are still making instructional choices.

Teachers decide when students work independently and when they work together. They decide when a discussion is more valuable than a digital response. They decide when to slow down, when to extend a learning experience, and when to step away from the screen altogether.

Teacher Expertise is Still the Best Tool for Tech Assessment

One reason I ask the previous questions is that they help identify where those choices still exist. Not every aspect of technology use is under a teacher’s control, but not every aspect is predetermined either. Even in highly digital environments, there are still opportunities to make intentional decisions about how students learn.

These questions are not meant to produce one right answer. A digital activity that makes sense in one classroom may not make sense in another. The value is in slowing down long enough to notice the decisions we are making and the assumptions we may no longer be questioning.

In classrooms where screens are increasingly part of the learning environment, professional judgment remains one of the most important tools teachers have. Asking these questions helps ensure that technology supports learning rather than defining it.